U.S. Pat. No. 5,095,660, granted Mar. 17, 1992, to Laurence A. Dillon, discloses a mechanism for polishing a concave surface on a lens blank 14. A similar polisher is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,707,949, granted Nov. 24, 1987 to Lars Hellstrom. U.S. Pat. No. 5,024,024, granted Jun. 18, 1991 to Masaki Watanabe shows a polishing machine having a rotary lens holder 22 that holds a lens 26 in contact with a rotary polishing head.
A principal object of the present invention is to provide an improved polishing machine or polisher for a concave lens surface or the like which is adapted to polish both spherical and non-spherical concave surfaces. An object of the invention is to provide a single polishing tool which completely polishes a back lens surface from center to edge. It is an object of the present invention to provide a polisher that with the same tool will polish the following concave surfaces: spherical (5 mm to 11 mm radius); spherical multicurve; spherical with one to many peripheral curves; aspheric; aspheric with aspheric periphery; spherical with aspheric periphery; conical; reverse geometry; rotationally non-semetric; toric; and multifocal.